


Moving On

by NevillesGran



Category: Middlegame - Seanan McGuire
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-28 07:56:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20775161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NevillesGran/pseuds/NevillesGran
Summary: A few weeks after what could have been the end of the world, the Middletons find the Manifest Doctrine of Ethos waiting for them in their living room.





	Moving On

**Author's Note:**

> hashtag first fic in the tag?
> 
> The title is very weak and I apologize for that.

Rumor is one of the fastest, most mutable elements of language. It cannot be stopped. It cannot be tamed. By the very clever or very powerful, it may be shaped—but most of the most clever and most powerful alchemists in the country had just been killed, first the gathered Congress and then, to what would have been their relief, Leigh Barrow and James Reed.

Ripples of rumor swept out from their deaths and met the shockwaves of the manifestation of the Doctrine, and rebounded through phones, computers, whispers of wind and messenger birds made of feathers and dust. The usually quiescent, or at least subtle, community of North American alchemists was abuzz with exaltation, amazement, dismay, despair... Knowledge is power and there was a vacuum of both, especially as the sense of manifested Pathos and Logos faded from any means anyone tried to track them. 

The competition began almost immediately to fill the void. 

Colin and Melinda Middleton were as ambitious as any, and they had more information than most, but they hadn’t survived as long as they had by drawing attention to either of these facts. They had toasted the deaths of the hidebound fools in the Congress, sure of their place in the soon-to-be exalted future. They had both turned like fillings to the iron to see the golden explosion of Manifestation (3,000+ miles was a long distance for impossible light to travel, but even after eight years of decreasing communication, they were more attuned than most to at least the Language half of the Doctrine.) They had heard of the fire in the Ohio cornfield and the numerous omens, trackers, and farseeings that said James Reed was dead, and they trembled and held one another, because 30 years of even a show-marriage counted for something in the face of such uncertainty.

They continued on, Colin with his bookstore and Melinda with her knitting club and Ladies Who Lunch. Days passed. Weeks passed. Melinda began a class she’d signed up for at the local community college; Colin went out with friends sometimes to fill the evenings. 

One night, they happened to arrive home at the exact same time—the sort of coincidence that happens naturally quite often—and found the Manifest Doctrine of Ethos waiting for them in their living room.

“Roger!” With the reflexes of an alchemist, Melinda smiled too broadly and brightly.

It elicited a terrifying lack of reaction. The instincts of a mother took over.

“You should have called before coming—you haven’t called in _ages_, dear. We would have-”

“_Stop_.”

Roger Middleton looked much the same as he had the last time he’d been to his childhood home. His hair was longer and shaggier, his lankiness had increased by another inch, the frames of his glasses had narrowed slightly. 

With absolutely no visible sign, the room folded around him to suit his preference, flowed out from him with the story of each settee, lamp, ceiling beam and breath of air. Melinda stopped. So did Colin, who had been inching his hand back toward the door. There wasn’t anything else they could possibly have done.

“Roger.”

The math girl—woman, really—was equally unmistakable. Reality was more _settled_ in her presence, quantified beyond Schrödinger’s wildest dreams. And she had the same feather-grey eyes and slightly bumpy nose as the boy they’d raised. She sat on a trio of stacked banker’s boxes by the coffee table, books and clothes peeking through the open flaps. Her arms were folded, her hair bright red, and they knew her name was Dodger.

Her tone was a warning, but not a threat—a reminder of a finite line, that could be crossed or not with only the faintest risk of sororital displeasure.

Roger pushed back his scraggly bangs, shoulders hunched. “I just...”

He stared at his parents with something raw, not quite longing and not quite anger. “Did you ever actually care for me?”

Lying wasn’t an option any more than not stopping had been, but to their credit, the thought barely crossed their minds.

“A hell of a lot more than we thought we would,” said Colin. “You were a...pretty great kid.”

“I’m so glad you’re the one who survived.” Melinda clasped her hands in front of her chest. “All the work we put in—and you! All those _hours_ reading—when you should have been doing your homework!”

Her laugh was weak and there were many, many words unsaid; they flitted through the air like ghosts. But that didn’t make what was spoken less true. Roger sighed.

Colin gripped his wife’s arm, and kept his voice steady. “Are you here to kill us?”

“No,” the manifestation of all Language said firmly. 

“_We’re_ not like that,” Math added with venom.

“My house burned down, so we're picking up some of my old stuff from here,” said Roger, and bent to retrieve the bankers box at his feet. A UC Berkeley sweatshirt, a stack of old comic books, and a few knickknacks were visible on the top. “And then never coming back.”

“What should we do?” Melinda asked nervously.

Roger huffed a laugh. “I don’t care. Do whatever you want. Just don’t try to keep in touch.” He turned back to his sister. “Come on, Dodge, take us home.”

It’s been known since 1905 that space is just another aspect of time. Displaced air flapped the pages of a magazine on the coffee table as the Manifest Doctrine disappeared from the Middletons' living room.


End file.
